Marketing Process Management....Oxymoron?

Friday, September 25, 2009 by Jeff Chamberlain
My first job in marketing was with Hewlett-Packard and my title was "Technical Marketing." Since that time this title has probably taken on multiple meanings, but at the time it seemed like an oxymoron (you know - like Jumbo Shrimp).  Having spent my entire career in marketing, the concept of Marketing Process Management suffers from a similar impression.  However, I can attest personally from my own experience and conversations with several marketers, that project management is a major part of marketing whether it is acknowledged or not.  We worked with Peppers and Rogers group to develop a white paper on the Marketing Value Chain that speaks to this aspect of Marketing Operations very well.

Marketing organizations have attacked this issue from many angles.  Some outsource heavily and put this burden on their agencies.  Some just throw more resources at it or bring in outsourced help when they get behind.  Some have hired project experts that drive manual process and some have started using collaboration or workflow tools to address the issue head on.  Very few have gotten very far along in their maturity of dealing with Marketing Process Management and are certainly not close to getting the most out of their resources.  Because that is really what it is about...getting the most of your resources (people, time and money).  You can avoid rush fees, do more in parallel, reduce or eliminate rework from missed legal or creative reviews and learn more about how you operate to optimize your own procedures.  It starts with you defining your marketing processes and committing to supporting and using marketing automation to manage and improve how you work. Oh, and we can help with all of that!
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Marketing Automation Software: The Agency Dilemma

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 by Bill Godfrey
Marketing agencies develop great creative.  For companies lacking strategic marketing competencies, agencies can also help fill this void.  Many agencies are also highly efficient in managing the outsourced production of marketing campaigns.  Agencies are a tremendous asset to corporate marketers. 

Within agencies, technology is harnessed and pushed to the limits for designing creative, executing email marketing campaigns, and managing interactive marketing activities using online marketing tools for search engine optimization and social media. 

So why have agencies been laggards to adopt marketing operations software, commonly referred to as Marketing Resource Management?  I believe it's because they realize that MRM applications have the potential to disrupt the status quo of their client relationships.  Think about it - why would agencies want to give their clients greater visibilty and transparency into their internal marketing budgets, plans, production workflows, traffic schedules, marketing calendars, digitial asset libraries and communication strategies? 

Aside from a few innovative firms, most agencies have been sitting on the sidelines out of fear that MRM systems will disintermediate the fundamental business relationship with their clients.  In the meantime, corporate marketing organizations are rapidly standardizing on MRM platforms in order to increase their own visibilty, accountability and control across their marketing portfolios, while accelerating their time to market and reducing costs and inefficiencies along the way.  Ironically, the benefits of marketing operations software can be the greatest in the very area of focus for many agencies -- interactive marketing!

The net result is that CMO's are taking outright ownership of their operational platform, inclusive of the intellectual capital and creative assets that were typically maintained within agencies.  Agencies and other marketing suppliers are being required to use these MRM systems as a virtual extension of the CMO's marketing value chain.  Over 70% of Aprimo's customers require their agencies to utilize their Aprimo solution as a collaborative extranet platform.  CMO's are no longer held captive by inordinate switching costs as they're now institutionalizing their marketing knowledgebase as a corporate asset.

Welcome to the 21st century.  Successful agencies of the future will embrace, and in my opinion should actually lead, this marketing transformation.  Interesting times, for sure.  



 
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Introduction to Aprimo's Vision

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 by Bill Godfrey

Here we go - my first blog post.  I hope you enjoy reading my musings on marketing automation software.  And yes, I'm naturally a little nervous about freely sharing my thoughts and ideas, but hey, I'm excited to learn from your feedback and dialogue, so don't be shy.

For those who don't know me or my company, I co-founded Aprimo, Inc. with Rob McLaughlin in 1998.  Time flies when you're having fun!  Despite all the nay-sayers chirping "are you out of your mind -- marketing can't be automated, doesn't want to be automated ... marketing is an art, not a science ... don't waste my time," we followed our intuition and passion to build a company to fundamentally transform the way companies would manage marketing in the 21st century.  Looking back, our decision to start Aprimo has been an immensely exciting and fulfilling professional journey that I wouldn't trade for anything.   
 

Since this is the point of origin for my blog, it probably makes sense to start with sharing my vision for Aprimo.  Aprimo's vision is to provide innovative software solutions for companies to automate their marketing value chain; accelerating their marketing productivity and optimizing their marketing return on investment.  It's simple, yet comprehensive.  It's unique, yet relevant.  It's revolutionary, yet overdue.  It's bold, yet achievable.  Our vision and execution over the past decade has created many new categories of marketing automation software - such as Marketing Resource Management and Enterprise Marketing Management, and yet our vision remains an integrated super set of all these sub-categories.  We are still growing into our shoes.  Aprimo's mission is to build a world-class marketing software company whose products become the defacto-standard application platform used by every marketing professional to 'manage the business of marketing.'   
 

Fast forward to today.  Aprimo has hundreds of customers with over 100,000 marketing professionals using our applications in more than 40 countries world-wide.  Did someone say this type of solution was overdue?  We're having a blast teaming with our customers to solve some of their most pressing marketing challenges - encompassing interactive marketing, multi-channel campaign management, lead management, production workflow, marketing planning and financial management.  

I look forward to sharing these experiences with you in my future blogs.


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